1972 O-Pee-Chee CFL Jerry Campbell #68 Base Set Ottawa Rough Riders CFL

Description

1972 O-Pee-Chee CFL Jerry Campbell #68 Base Set Ottawa Rough Riders CFL Some names make a vintage card feel heavier than its weight in cardboard, and Jerry Campbell is one of them, because the smiling man with the moustache on this 1972 O-Pee-Chee CFL Jerry Campbell #68 Base Set Ottawa Rough Riders CFL card grew into one of the most decorated defenders in the history of Canadian football. The front presents him in the dark Ottawa jersey with orange and white sleeve stripes, number 54 across his chest and a bright blue sky behind him, all held inside the deep red ROUGH RIDERS border of the Ottawa block. The reverse is the classic Canadian O-Pee-Chee bilingual back, printed in blue and green ink on grey cardboard stock with the biography in French and English, which marks it clearly as a Canadian bilingual back and not a puzzle back. That back explains that he came to the Riders by trade in 1968, that he had proven to be a star every year, that he was a fun loving devil may care type of individual, and that he was an All Canadian in 1971, while the cartoon delivers his famous nickname, Soupy. The career that followed the 1972 season turned Soupy Campbell into a legend in the capital. He was a CFL All Star in seven consecutive seasons from 1969 through 1975, a captain and the emotional centre of a defensive unit known across the league as Capital Punishment, and he won Grey Cup rings with Ottawa in 1968, 1969 and 1973 while lining up beside Ken Lehmann and playing behind Billy Joe Booth. He was inducted into the Ottawa Sport Hall of Fame in 1995 and into the Canadian Football Hall of Fame in 1996, and when he passed away in 2017 at the age of 73, tributes poured in from across the country for a player who could take a ball carrier's head off on one play and help him up on the next. His card number 68 sits inside the Ottawa block of a 132 card set that also contains 13 players per team, 14 Pro Action cards and a checklist at number 132, and this release was the final CFL football set O-Pee-Chee ever made, adding a satisfying layer of significance to a card that already carries Hall of Fame weight. this is the cleanest card of the nine, with crisp corners showing only a hint of roughness at the top left tip, a full gloss surface free of creases and wrinkles, and a single pinpoint fleck in the blue sky at the right side of the photograph. Centering is approximately 55/45 left to right with the top and bottom borders split evenly at 50/50, the red border retains its original depth of colour, and the reverse is clean and well centred with one small white printing dot on the blue border left of centre. A conservative grade assessment places this card at the EX-MT 6 level, and it is genuinely close to the NM 7 tier, with the minor top left corner touch and the tiny sky fleck being the only reasons for holding the number where it is. Given the Hall of Fame resume behind the name, this card is the anchor piece of the group. Grade Estimate: EX-MT 6